


Alternian Dusk

by Archaon



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alien Biology, Culling, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-06-06
Updated: 2011-06-06
Packaged: 2017-10-20 05:07:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archaon/pseuds/Archaon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>>BE THE IMPERIAL DRONE.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alternian Dusk

 

>BE THE IMPERIAL DRONE.

You are now one of the many Imperial drones serving the Trollian Empire. Your body is an intimidating collection of corded muscles and sharp spines and you tower above most others, at a respectable 3 (three) standard human measuring units. Being an artificially created organism, made via collaboration of genetic engineering and mechanical implants, you barely qualify as alive, never mind sentient. Your STRICTLY DEFINED behavioral routines only allow rudimentary free will, just enough to make sure you never get stuck at weirdly placed corners. You don’t mind, though, because you are not programmed to.

>REVIEW CURRENT OBJECTIVE STATUS.

You are on your 56th (fifty-sixth) run since your creation. All body systems operate at maximum efficiency.

You have visited 20 (twenty) extra-planetary military crafts and 1 (one) minor-sized colony. 

You have successfully collected 4,053 (four thousand fifty-three) FILIAL PAILS, which are safely kept in your Sylladex, operating at its standard LINKED LIST modus.

You have successfully terminated 113 (one hundred thirteen) individuals that have FAILED to produce the required two pails, of which 76 (seventy-six) reacted violently and had to be subdued before termination. You are also in possession of 205 (two-hundred five) troll horns, acquired from said victims, that are stored in a separate Sylladex and will be used for the Empress’s ever-expanding “WALL OF SHAME”, which is open for public viewing at all times. The missing 21 (twenty-one) horns were either already absent or were atomized during termination.

You are now entering the Alternian atmosphere on board an Imperial shuttle, along with 63 (sixty-three) other Imperial drones. In fact, the shuttle has just landed.

>EXIT SHUTTLE IN A HURRIED MANNER.

Such notions fail to even register. You were obviously the first to enter the shuttle, so you are to be the last to leave it. These things are crowded as it is. Without orderly egress, you will be here all day!

>EXIT SHUTTLE IN AN ORDERLY MANNER.

You wait until the other drones have departed, then you do so. You have landed in one of the many small spaceports on Alternia. They are scattered all over the planet to avoid traffic congestion and they comprise some of the few overground locations the non-adult trolls are forbidden to visit, at penalty of death.

There is a well-defined path that begins from the shuttle bay and extends to an underground elevator, leading to your current destination. The distance is negligible and nothing unusual should happen while you traverse it.

>OBSERVE AS SOMETHING UNUSUAL HAPPENS.

This is, of course, BULLSHIT. If you had but a sliver of emotion, you’d be furious. A deafening sound just filled your senses and the rest of the drones are long gone. The accompanying earthquake was disquieting as well. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else around either, sentient or not. It’s up to you to investigate and possibly mitigate any aberrations.

And by ‘mitigate’ you mean fucking OVERKILL-OBLITERATE!

>ALLOCATE STRIFE SPECIBUS.

Your strife specibus was automatically allocated during your creation. You wield the MurderKind kind abstratus, which allows use of anything that can be used for grizzly murder and obliteration. In your line of work, it is barely adequate. Since you are unaware of the incident’s nature, you prepare mildly for it, readying your Imperial Death Ray Emitter and your Razor Pinwheel Telescopic Lance.

>SEARCH AND POSSIBLY DESTROY.

There is no need to search, the incident happened just by one of the complex’s fortified walls. Despite the distance of 200 (two-hundred) standard human measuring units, the damage is obvious. In fact, you don’t believe you’ll get any chance to destroy things either. The meteor that apparently fell, disintegrated a large part of said wall, along with the laser fence, Doom turrets, psychic dampeners and hunter-killer droids, leaving a large crater of half-molten rock behind.

>CONTEMPLATE THE DAMAGE.

There is nothing to contemplate. This whole situation is MORE BULLSHIT. Alternia is the cradle of the Trollian civilization, in at least two ways. To that end, there is a VAST amount of ENORMOUS CANNONS in high orbit. They take care of three kinds of threats. Vindictive members of inferior alien races with a chip on their shoulder, troll outlaws of the pirating kind, that fancy some early recruitment, stealing from the cradle as such, and other harmful objects, including space rocks.

For a meteor of that size to actually touch down, someone, somewhere must have dropped the non-culling ball. Unless, of course the meteor inexplicably appeared behind the cannons' line of sight, which is so ridiculous, you won’t even consider it as a possibility.

>INVESTIGATE FURTHER.

This is getting a bit uncomfortable, which is to say beyond your jurisdiction. Still, defending the planet is one of your MAJOR DIRECTIVES. The wigglers must be free to KILL each other, without having to worry about outside dangers. Exposing them to such threats would be wrong and immoral.

>DECIDE, ALREADY!

Getting stumped by situations that don’t involve pails or termination is hardly uncommon for you. For efficiency’s sake, you were not designed with decent higher processes. Still, even a lowly drone as you has some problem sleuthing abilities.

It doesn’t help that this night keeps shoveling things that SHOULD NOT HAPPEN towards you. You would pity yourself if you knew how.

>SIGH. FACE TOWARDS CRATER. PLACE ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF THE OTHER REPEATEDLY. REACH THE EDGE OF THE CRATER. DESCEND DOWN THE CRATER. REPORT ON WHAT CAN BE FOUND IN THE CRATER’S CENTER.

You decide to follow the string of commands, even though you don’t understand its origin. Seriously, if you had the capacity to be irritated, you’d do so.

Your carapace is heavily reinforced, equally impervious to hard vacuum, high pressure, telekinesis and most acids, as well as somewhat resistant to radiation and brief immersion to lava.

Yes, your line of work can be very interesting.

Still, you register the intense heat under your hooves. It is completely forgotten as your take in the sight before you.

By the way, the explosion you just heard was your poor weird-shit-O-meter, flipping out for the last time.

Inside the crater you find 12 (twelve) troll larvae, that seem to have recently hatched. At this point, sentient or not, you are just about ready to make an artistic fucking BACKFLIP off the sanity wagon. A troll larva can achieve an astounding 0.5 (zero point five) standard human measuring units per minute. The brooding caverns, where they usually hatch, are located at 15,000 (fifteen thousand) standard human measuring units beneath the surface and they only emerge as wigglers.

>DECIDE COURSE OF ACTION.

You completely ignore the fact they are also surviving in temperatures that should have fried them already and try to map your next course of action. Normally, Imperial Drones never come in contact with anything other than adult trolls, either for collection or for maintenance. Interacting with wigglers or larvae is unheard of and there are no directives that apply to such a situation.

>CAPTCHALOG LARVAE.

After some hesitation, you decide to return the larvae to their appropriate place. This should give them a chance to be culled properly instead of simply wasting away on the surface. Why, each of them has a 1/5,000 (one in five thousand) chance of surviving to reach the surface.

You captchalog the 12 (twelve) larvae. A new card is created to contain them, linking itself to your last filial pail card and pushing it out of reach. You are not concerned about that, mostly because you are not capable of concern, but also because you will be passing by the brooding caverns anyway.

>RESUME ORIGINAL MISSION.

You do so with what should have been great satisfaction, only it’s not. You enter the elevator, descend to the lower levels, then walk on one of the ledges overseeing the brooding caverns. Without even pausing, you retrieve the larvae from your sylladex and throw them off the ledge. They should probably survive the fall, as both eggs and larvae are quite soft, but you don’t even care. You make a note to inform someone of the meteor incident, then proceed to walk the long distance of 20,000 (twenty thousand) standard human measuring units between you and the Mother Grub. You’d consider yourself lucky if you could. That’s only a tenth of the cavern’s radius.

>STOP BEING THE IMPERIAL DRONE. BE THE MOTHER GRUB INSTEAD.

You successfully shift your perception. You are now a Mother Grub. Your girth is vast and your weight is about 4,000,000 standard human weight measuring units.

You too are an artificial construct, though all of your parts are biological. You are actually almost sapient and capable of some emotion, unlike the previous host.

>DANCE AROUND IN AN EMOTIONAL WAY.

Just HOW stupid must one be to even contemplate that? Disregarding the fact your movement would probably cause dangerous tectonic activity, you are unable to even budge. You did spend a few sweeps flying around when you were young, but your legs and wings are long gone now.

>FONDLY REGARD DOMAIN.

The brooding cavern extends far in all directions and you can’t help but feel accomplished. You are actually one of many Mother Grubs, but most people don’t know that. Really, it would be stupid to base a whole race’s existence on a single organism, no matter her capabilities, but you like the idea of being thus revered, however misplaced.

Speaking of capabilities, you take a swig from the nutrition tube, conveniently placed by your mouth, then return to your duties. You don’t even notice the Imperial drones filling your genetic tanks with incestuous slurry. You have a quota of 50,000,000 eggs per day to fill and this day is already half gone.

As you chug them out, the eggs slowly push each other all the way to the cavern’s edges, where they’ll hopefully hatch. You love all of them, although you’ve never even seen a single larva. It doesn’t matter they aren’t technically your offspring.

>MAKE FUN OF SOMETHING.

You inwardly consider the few Mother Grubs that decide to serve as lusii instead of actually fulfilling their purpose. What a bunch of losers! They produce at most five matriorbs and they don’t even survive the process. Seriously, what a bunch of WIMPS.

>STOP BEING THE MOTHER GRUB. BE ONE OF THE TROLL LAVRAE INSTEAD.

You are now a troll larva. You have just hatched and only the simplest, most instinctive thoughts enter the puny neuron stem that passes for your mind.

You know you need to FEED.

You know pain.

You die.

It seems like another larva was munching on you and actually managed to kill you. Your inert carcass will contribute to the development of a new troll, provided it survives that long. Each larva must first ingest the equivalent of twenty-four other larvae before even trying to pupate. Conveniently, that means that out of fifty million eggs per day per Mother Grub, only two million get to pupate.

>BE ONE OF THE ABERRANT TWELVE LARVAE.

You try to be sneaky and assume the role of one of the twelve meteor travelers, hoping to take advantage of their possible PLOT ARMOR.

Unfortunately, you soon realize you are close to this chapter’s end. You also learn that this may or may not be a one-shot story. It can certainly be expanded, but it’s pretty decent as a standalone. You may or may not have something to say on the matter.

>REVIEW ALREADY!


End file.
